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THE PHILOSOPHY 



THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 



By Frederic A. Hinckley. 



V 

\ 








BOSTON, MASS. ! 


GEORGE H. 


ELLIS, PRINTER, NO. 7 TREMONT PLAGE. 




1874. 






» 



**■ 



THE PHILOSOPHY 

— OF 

THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 

By Frederic A. Hinckley. 

The battle of Despotism verms Liberty is at least as 
old as the bills, and it would sometimes seem # as 
eternal. From general political chaos to the divine 
right of kings was a great step ; from the divine right 
©firings to the divine right of majorities was a greater 
step; from the divine right of majorities to the divine 
right of the individual will be the greatest step cf all, 
and presupposes more than one revolution. "I feel 
that I cannot £0 wrong when I lean to the side of lib- 
erty," was the~sublime utterance of the noblest soul 
Massachusetts ever sent to Washington. Spite of all 
seeming retrograde movements, mankind are ever 
gravitating toward justice. Taken at their best, they 
are seeking freedom in dead earnest. This is the. 
meaning of the reforms, each one of which, so far as 
it is guided by thought, is a protest against some form 
of the "barbarism of slavery," and a demand that 
liberty shall be not only national, but world-wide and 
universal. Of course all aristocracies, whether of 
' color, intelligence, wealth, or sex, are antagonistic to 
this idea, and are being, or are to be, overturned. 
The labor revolution grows naturally out of a con- 
dition of things which produces and maintains an 
aristocracy of wealth. , 

"The State," said Emerson once, "must consider 
the poor man, and all voices must speak for him." 



4 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

That is one of the duties of this hour. In every 
period of history there is some great fact which stares 
us in the face, demanding attention and ultimately 
removal. With us, for thirty years, that fact was chat- 
tel slavery ; to-day it is poverty. The struggle for the 
abolition of the second is a natural outgrowth of that 
which resulted in the abolition of the first. They are 
as like as father and child, the son possessing all the 
traits of the sire. Poverty is full of the elements of 
slavery, extreme wealth of slave-holding. Just as the 
abolition of slavery carried with it the slave-owner, so 
the abolition of poverty will carry with it the labor- 
owner. Justice required that the black man should 
own himself ; it requires that labor shall own itself. 
Goldsmith wrote wiser than he knew when he said : — 

"111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 

Perhaps he had some slight vision of the time when 
men should say to their sons, in the old lines of Ben 
Jonson : — 

"Get money; still get money, boy; 

No matter by what means." 

It is not hard to see the results of such teaching 
on every hand. From the man of business who, in 
the lust for the almighty dollar, gives up all home life, 
and bolts down his meals in restaurants, to the poor 
outcast who has no home to eat her meals in, the cor- 
rupting influence of a state of society in which (to 
borrow an expressive phrase) men are "choked with 
cotton dust and cankered with gold," is painfully ap- 
parent. 

Perhaps your next-door neighbor is a millionnaire. 
His elegant mansion is filled with the finest furniture, 
pictures adorn its walls, and books in abundance lend 
their inexpressible charm. This man is a large oper- 
ator in stocks. He has been what is called a lucky 
fellow, and without working very hard has accumu- 
lated a fortune. From his windows he can look out 
upon a half dozen dilapidated buildings, in which 
sunlight is unknown, on whose floors are no carpets, 
on whose walls and tables neither pictures nor books. 
Filthy, ignorant, haif-starved human beings, — that is 
all they contain. The mansion of wealth and the 
novels of poverty side by side, — these are the products 



THE LABOB MOVEMENT. 5 

of the highest civilization the nineteenth century can 
boast. As the poor men and women who rent those 
miserable abodes pass and repass that stately man- 
sion, going forth from home at daybreak only to re- 
turn with the setting sun, think you their aspirations 
for a full development of all their faculties are large? 
Do they grasp forward for great ideas, for justice, 
love, mercy ? Neither do the pampered family inside 
those stately hails. Alike in their lack of apprecia- 
tion of the great realities, an impassable gulf sepa- 
rates them forever, save when they go hand in hand 
to vote iniquity at the polls. Take it where you will, 
if you can imagine society divided into three sections — 
the rich, the middle class, and the poor — you will at 
once see that the greatest amount of real happiness is 
to be found in the middle class. In that is the most 
sobriety, the best education, the largest progress ; 
while, if you seek the strongholds of vice and crime, 
the abodes of intemperance and prostitution, you go 
straight to the doors of extreme wealth and poveity. 
2s ow if the good things of life are in excess in the 
middle class, and the bad things preponderate in the 
other two, it follows that the middle class comes the 
nearest, to the ideal state : in other words, that the 
abolition of extreme wealth on the one hand and 
poverty on the other would bring no nearer to a just 
commonwealth. Directly bearing on this point, 
Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, referring to a 
change in his own views from the time when he 
thought only of mitigating the inequalities of exist- 
ence, says: "The notion that it was possible to go 
further than this in removing the injustice — for in- 
justice it is, whether admitting of a complete remedy 
or not — involved in the fact that some are born to 
riches and the vast majority to poverty, I then reck- 
oned chimerical, and only hoped that by universal 
education, leading to voluntary restraint on popula- 
tion, the portion of the poor might be made more 
tolerable. ... I now look forward to a time when so- 
ciety will no longer be divided into \he idle and the 
industrious; when the rule that they who do not 
work shall not eat will be applied not to paupers 
only, but impartially to all ; when the division of the 
produce of labor, instead of depending, as in so great 
a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be 



6 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

made by concert on an acknowledged principle of 
justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be 
thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert 
themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which 
are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared 
with the society they belong to. The social problem 
of the future I now consider to be how to unite the 
greatest individual liberty of action with a common 
ownership in the raw material of the globe, and an 
equal participation of all in the benefits of combined 
labor." 

Do such views seem visionary to-day? And if so, 
why? Because to-day the desire for money over- 
rides everything else. Live intemperance, live pros- 
titution, live all manner of wickedness, so you help 
the powerful to coin dollars and power out of the 
miseries of the weak ! 

"Master," said the fisherman, "I marvel how the 
fishes live in the sea?" 

"Why, as men do a-land," was the reply; "the 
great ones eat up the little ones." 

Exactly so; and the labor movement proposes to 
reform that fact, so far as the men are concerned, by 
so changing the existing order of things regarding 
wealth and poverty that there shall be no great ones 
to eat, and no little ones to be eaten. It recognizes at 
the start, in the language of its best thinker, that the 
greatest evil of modern times is poverty ; and the ab- 
olition of it will be the most important knowledge 
which can be communicated to mankind. It knows 
well that poverty is the dead weight on many men's 
shoulders, keeping them down, and thereby retarding 
the progress of society. Whatever people do about 
this demand of labor, one thing is certain: — 

"This mournful truth is everywhere confessed: 
Slow rises worth by poverty depressed." 

isov must the intimate relation between poverty 
and extreme wealth be forgotten. The two live or 
die together. Xot more certain is it that the large 
majority of laboring men receive too little than that 
the few who constitute in the main the employing 
class receive too much. The excess in the one case 
is the result of the deficit in the other. Hence ration- 
al ■ labor reform means that the power of accumu- 
lated wealth shall be destroyed, and its natural coun- 



THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 7 

terpart, poverty, abolished ; or in other words it calls 
for a more equitable distribution of wealth. There 
is something very forcible in the eloquent and touch- 
ing little speech which Dickens put into the mouth of 
Stephen Blackpool, who, his employer said, always 
had a grievance. 

"Look round toun, ,, he said, "so rich as't is — and 
see the numbers o' people as has been broughten into 
bein heer, fur to weave, an to card, an to piece out a 
livin twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how 
we live, an wheer we live, an in what numbers, and 
by what chances, an wi what sameness ; and look how 
the mills is awlus agoin, an how they never works us 
no nigher to ony disant object — ceptin awlus, Death. 
Look how you considers of us, an writes of us, an how 
yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus wrong, an 
never had no reason in us, sin ever we were born. . . . 
Sir, I canna, in my little learning an my common 
way, tell what will better aw this, but I can tell yo 
what I know will never do't. The strong hand will 
never do't. Agreeing fur to make one side unnat' ral- 
ly awlus and forever right, and t'other side unnat' ral- 
ly awlus and forever wrong, will never do't. Most 
o' aw, ratin 'em as so mooch power, an reglatin 'em as 
if they was figures in a soom, or machines, wi out 
loves an likens, wi out memories and inclinations, wi 
out souls to weary an souls to hope, — this will never 
do't, sir, till God's work is onmade." 

And Stephen might have added, Only one thing 
will do it, and that is justice. And justice means 
that in some way or other this man who owns States 
and controls Legislatures, and this poor woman who, 
driven by poverty, goes down to hell in North Street, 
shall be brought under the reign of civilization, and 
enjoy the benefits of the golden rule. It means the 
curbing of unjust power, and the lifting up of the ig- 
norant and passionate. It means education, oppor- 
tunities, aspiration, fair play. In a word and .pri- 
marily, it means a more equitable distribution of 
wealth. 

Now how shall this distribution be accomplished ? 
Men say, "Suppose you get wealth equally divided, 
it will all work back again to its present condition. 
The same causes which have made things as they are 
will make them so again." Ah, yes; but we propose 



8 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

to change the causes. True, if Stewart and Vander- 
bilt are to sit down once a month, or once a year, and 
distribute their dividends to the less favored, they 
will have to continue the operation regularly. But 
that would be the mo&t artificial arrangement in the 
world, and is an idea promulgated not by the friends 
but the opponents of labor reform. Labor cares noth- 
ing for A. T. Stewart ; it cares everything for the sys- 
tem of which he is the fruit. It knows well that he 
gives of his possessions liberally, — that he establishes 
lodging-houses for workingwomen, and all that ; but 
it does not like the system which makes it possible for 
him thus to give, and necessary for the workingwom- 
an thus to receive, his charity. Be it clearly under- 
stood, therefore, we have nothing to do with the past, 
everything to do with the future accumulations of 
wealth. See the difference. If we operate on that 
already garnered, we deal inevitably with men, and 
make mere surface work of it. It is like cropping off 
the twigs and branches ; the roots and trunk are left, 
and the tree still grows. If, on the contrary, we look 
to the future, we shall work not upon men but un- 
derlying causes and principles, and change them. Or 
perhaps, more correctly speaking, we shall remove 
the artificial impediments which man has set up to 
stop the peaceful operation of natural laws. The 
great thing is not to abolish Stewart, but so to alter 
the existing order that such as he shall be impossible 
in the future. Dig up the roots, and the twigs and 
branches will take care of themselves. When any 
one asks, therefore, "What does the labor movement 
inean?" the answer is plain. It means a more equi- 
table distribution of the proceeds of labor, the aboli- 
tion, through natural causes, of extreme wealth on the 
one hand and poverty on the other. And this brings 
us direct to the question, Under what sort of a system 
can the relations of capital and labor be based on 
equity ? The answer is contained in one word, Co- 
operation. Not the combining of one class against 
another. Not protective unions formed for the sav- 
ing of a per cent. Circumstances may justify and ex- 
cuse the one, and prudence and economy lie at the 
bottom of the other; but both are superficial. The 
real cooperation is a combining of principles, a pro- 
tective union of the two vital forces. As Mr. Phillips 



THE LABOE MOVEMENT. 9 

has expressed it, Capital and Labor are naturally like 
the two parts of a pair of scissors. They should he 
partners, every laborer being a capitalist and every 
capitalist a laborer. 

Herbert Spencer says "that, while the humanity of 
the remote future will have but one religion, as primi- 
tive humanity had but one, we are now living midway 
in the course of civilization, and have two, which are 
opposed to each other — the religion of enmity and the 
religion of amity. The two religions are adapted to 
two conflicting sets of social requirements. The one 
set is supreme at the beginning; the other set will be 
supreme at the end ; and a [compromise has to be 
maintained between them during the progress from 
beginning to end. On the one hand, there must be 
social self-preservation in face of external enemies. 
On the other hand, there must be cooperation among 
fellow-citizens, which can exist only in proportion as 
fair dealing of man with man creates mutual trust. 
Unless the one necessity is met, the society disap- 
pears by extinction, or by absorption into some con- 
quering society. Unless the other necessity is met, 
there cannot be that division of labor, exchange of 
services, consequent industrial progress and increase 
of numbers, by which a society is made strong enough 
to survive'. " 

Evidently, such a harmonious relation is not to 
be reached in a day, a month, or a year. It is to 
come naturally and in order. So that although we 
may talk of cooperation as an end to be sought, it is 
only as something in the future ; it is not, in this 
broad and radical sense, possible to-day. Before we 
can consider what the condition of labor will be, when 
it gets its share of the world's wealth, we must con- 
sider its condition here and now. Before we can an- 
swer the question, How shall wealth be more equally 
distributed ? we must first answer the question, How 
is wealth distributed as equally as it is ? 

This brings us face to face with the wage-system. 
For our present purposes, it is sufficiently accurate to 
say that the wealth of the world is distributed through 
four channels — Profits, Charities, Theft, and Wages; 
and that by far the larger portion of it is distributed 
through wages. At all events, what the laborer gets 
comes through that channel. Now the wage-system 



10 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

is world-wide, and may be safety taken as the gauge of 
civilization. That is, to use the language of the Re- 
port of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, the day's 
pay of the Chinaman is an index of his idol worship, 
his patriarchal government, and exclusive policy. 
The day's pay of the American indicates freedom and 
a republican or cooperative government. The wage- 
system is the natural step from barbarism and slavery 
to cooperation. The passage through it must be a 
natural growth. The race did not jump from barba- 
rism to wages ; it cannot jump from wages to cooper- 
ation. It ever moves by the slow but sure process of 
natural laws. 

CFirst, then, having accepted the fact that so much 
of the wealth of the world as labor secures comes to 
it through the wage-channel, we proceed to answer 
the question, How shall the transition be made from 
wages to cooperation ? by saying that it must be by 
causing the laborer to receive gradually more and 
more of wealth in the shape of wages. Or, more ex- 
actly speaking, wages must be increased without in- 
creasing to a corresponding extent the cost of produc-^. 
tion. Men must be made dear faster than things.^J 
Plainly, if labor could receive to-morrow fifty per 
cent, more of the proceeds of its toil in wages than it 
receives to-day, without having the cost of produc- 
tion so much increased that it would cost it fifty per 
cent, more barely to live, — that is, if the purchasing 
power of its wages could be increased,— it would be 
an advance toward that cooperation which means a 
more equitable distribution, and is so well illustrated 
by the scissors. So we come to ask ourselves, What 
is the law which governs wages? Why have they 
been steadily increasing for hundreds of years? 
What will continue the increase in years to come? 
We answer, The expense of living; or, in plainer 
phrase, perhaps, the habits of the people. There is 
no power like habit, especially where education is 
lacking. The beast does things from habit, and, the 
more animal man is, the more does he act from the 
same impulse. Now you cannot teach the mass of 
men to hoard money. Here and there an individual 
may, but the majority will spend very nearly what 
they receive ; and, by a law as strong as any in the 
universe, they will receive, as a whole, about the 



THE LABOE MOVEMENT. 11 

amount they spend. That is, their wages and expen- 
ditures will be regulated by their habits of living. 

Mr. James Hole, in his Homes for the Working 
Classes, writes : — 

"That wages are very much regulated by the hab- 
its and standard of living of the workman is one of 
the best established principles in political economy. 
Inferior habits of living are as much a cause a3 they 
are a result of low wages.' ' 

John Stuart Mill says (Political Economy, vol. 1, 
p. 455) : — 

"Xo remedies for low wages have the smallest 
chance of being efficacious which do not operate on 
and through the minds and habits of the people." 

Hon. Amasa Walker says (Science of Wealth, 
p. 255) :— 

"There being, then, no uniform and established 
standard of wages, they vary according to the ex- 
penses of subsistence in different countries, and the 
condition in which the laboring classes are willing to 
live." 

However these authorities may disagree on other 
points, they seem to agree on this : that wages repre- 
sent very nearly the expense of living. Hence the 
capitalist, looking from his narrow standpoint, says 
that the ignorant man, the degraded, brute man, is 
the cheapest laborer. So he is, but he is also the 
poorest consumer. And he is a cheap laborer be- 
cause a poor consumer. Increase his wants, and the 
new slippers, the extra coat, the most superficial of 
improvements, will tend to raise his whole standard 
of living. Thus, elevating his habits, you will in- 
crease his wages, and, while increasing his wages, 
will increase his consumption. Making him a dearer 
laborer, you also make him a better consumer. Mak- 
ing him a better consumer increases by so much the 
demand for production, and increasing the demand 
for production naturally makes the manufacture of 
merchandise cheap. So that while improving the 
habits of the people will on the one hand increase 
wages, on the other it will increase the amount of 
production, and hence diminish rather than increase 
its cost. Or, in other words, whatever wfll increase 
the wants and comforts of a people will increase 



12 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

wages', without increasing to a corresponding extent 
the cost of production. If it be urged that wages 
may be increased without increasing the cost of pro- 
duction, and still the capitalist receive as large or a 
larger proportion of the profits than now, because of 
the increase in the amount of production, — that is, 
that the capitalist may receive a smaller percentage of 
the profits, and still, by the introduction of machinery 
and the action of the generally recognized law that it 
does not cost ten times as much to make ten coats as 
it does to make one, secure the same lion's share of 
the proceeds of labor which he now enjoys, and 
therefore a more equitable distribution of wealth be 
as far off as ever, — we reply that, the more the habits 
of the people are improved, the better will they be 
able to obtain wealth, and use it wisely. The process 
of education in its broadest sense, which shall take 
A. B., who lives in that dilapidated ten-foot building 
at the North End, without carpets, curtains, or table- 
cloths, surrounded by filth and corruption of every 
description, and put him into a neat cottage, with 
plenty of sunlight, furniture, papers, and books, — 
which shall give his wife a flower garden, and his 
children a healthy atmosphere, — that process inevita- 
bly educates into him more of the ability to secure 
his share of the wealth of the world. To suppose 
this to have been done with the thousands of A. B.'s, 
who "delve from early morn 'til late at eve" for a 
mere pittance, is to suppose a gigantic stride taken 
towards cooperation and the more equitable distribu- 
tion which it signifies. 

The objection brought to most of the schemes ad-? 1 
vanced in behalf of labor is that they fail to recognize' 
the importance of education. The objection is a 
sound one, and usually well-founded. The twin evil 
of poverty is ignorance, and education, broad and 
universal, an absolute necessity. It is the glory and 
the strength of this theory concerning wages that it 
is based on that very proposition. It is the educa- 
tional phase of the movement. Its fundamental idea 
is that the masses must be educated up to better 
habits of living. No wise man looks upon education 
as a mere matter of school books. Education means 
the freest and broadest development of all the facul- 



THE EABOK MOYEUIE^T. 13 

ties. With the mass of men, ground down by pover- 
ty, the first step in that development is to better their 
habits of living. 

See that man with ragged clothes and filthy face, 
his hair uncombed, just enough of his boots left to 
hold them together. As he walks your streets, he looks 
ready to go to pieces all at once, like the deacon's 
"one-horse shay." Put some new shoes on his feet — 
he begins to see the need of new trousers to go with 
them; then a new vest, a new coat, and a clean face. 
Then he goes home ; his wife and children need new 
clothes, too, he thinks. Then his house must be re- 
paired ; there must be a carpet on the floor, a table in 
the room, and by-and-by, when months, perhaps 
years, of such reform have gone on, he will come 
home some night with the Herald or Times. Then 
his taste for reading will begin. He won't read 
Charles Sumner's speeches at first; more likely the 
doings of the Police Court. But he will have begun 
the habit of reading. So we might follow him 
through a long life of such, gradual improvement. 
Well, that is education, broad and substantial ; the 
natural, logical way to abolish ignorance and its at- 
tendant evils, such as intemperance and prostitution. 
It is precisely the education which forms the grand 
base of this whole theory of increasing wages by rais- 
ing to a higher level the habits of the people, creat- 
ing in them new wants, enabling them to secure new 
comforts. Am I not right, then, in claiming this as 
the educational phase of the labor movement, and 
in summoning to its support the men and women 
whose minds are broad enough to see, and whose 
hearts are warm enough to feel, that this is the edu- 
cation which the world needs ? Had I ten thousand 
tongues, each one gifted with the eloquence of 
O'Connell, they should all say, "Improve the habits 
of the masses, that they may be dearer laborers and 
better consumers ; that thus, by naturally increasing 
wages and production, a more equitable distribution 
of wealth may be attained." 

This, then, is the touchstone to which all measures 
proposed on behalf of labor must be brought. Every 
means by which the habits of the masses can be im- 
proved, their wants increased, their style of living 
raised to a higher level, and thus wages naturally in- 



14 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

creased without a corresponding increase in the prof- 
its of capital, — every such means is to be accepted. 
Of all the measures proposed, the two which most 
fully ana clearly come under this head are the ballot 
for woman and a reduction of the hoars of labor. Let 
us briefly consider each of these. Take the ballot 
for woman. If a careful observer of men and things 
were asked what is the most scandalous fact of the 
century, he would be forced to reply, The condition of 
the working woman. She is doubly enslaved. She 
suffers first, as all women do and as workingmen do 
not, from the old and barbarous idea, not yet out- 
grown, of the inferiority of the female sex, and its 
consequent subordination to the male; and, second, 
she suffers as all workingmen do, and as other wom- 
en do not, from the old and equally barbarous idea of 
the degrading influences of labor, and the consequent 
subordination of the laboring to the capitalist class. 
She is not only a woman, but a laboring woman. 
She is not only a laborer, but a woman laborer. She 
is the subject of two aristocracies ; one of sex, the 
other of wealth. She must be emancipated from 
both. The heavy oppression which cuts her off from 
her share of the world's opportunities, and refuses to 
open to her all the avocations of life, will not be over- 
come until both the labor and the woman's rights 
movements conquer. The triumph of the former 
will simply place her in the category with other wom- 
en. The success of the latter will only put her on 
the same platform with the workingmen. The 
friends of woman, therefore, may well insist that she 
shall have time and room in which to grow, and the 
friends of labor will be false to her highest interests 
if they do not insist upon her having the ballot, that 
with it she may demand her own rights, and speak 
on all public questions for herself. The ballot means 
for her the opening of a career; the opening of a ca- 
reer means a change in all her habits of living ; and 
a change in all her habits of living means a larger 
share of the proceeds of her labor. I recall with no 
small degree of satisfaction the admirable words of 
the Report of the Bureau of Statistics for 1871 : — 

"The workingwoman (in common with all other 
women) should be at once endowed with her rightful 
political equality. This will do more towards purify- 



THE LABOK MOVEMENT. 15 

ing the social state, and correcting the evils under | 
which she suffers, than volumes of statutes. The 
vilest man can further his villainy at the ballotbox ; 
the purest and noblest woman cannot protect her 
smallest right thereby. The tyranny that oppresses 
her is strengthened by her own disfranchisement, and 
makes her impotent to defend her own prerogatives.'' 

The ballot, then, is an instrument in the hands of 
the workingwoman for securing a more equitable dis- 
tribution of wealth, through the wage-channel. It is 
the columbiad of which Mr. Sumner speaks, that 
shall make her a full-armed monitor. 

Again: take the measure of a reduction of the 
hours of labor. Not necessarily ten hours or eight 
hours (by-and-by it may be six or four), but a reduc- 
tion of the hours of labor. That means more leisure 
for the working classes, — room in which to grow, — 
time for the making of men. This demand raises 
man above all consideration of manufactures or 
commerce, and calls for the largest development of 
humanity. In other words, it says, Secure through 
wages that better distribution of wealth which shall 
lead to cooperation, by improving the habits of the 
people; by that broad education which means the 
fullest possible development of all the faculties. 
Now to claim that a man is open to such an educa- 
tion who has time only to work, eat, and sleep, who 
leaves home at daylight only to return at night utter- 
ly exhausted, is simply an absurdity. To quote from 
a recent writer, himself a mechanic, the present sys- 
tem of long hours means, so far as labor is concerned, 
4 'to get up in the morning at five o'clock, cook and 
eat a hasty breakfast, run perchance to catch the 
cars, go off into a corner to eat a cold dinner from a 
basket, and to reach home at seven in the evening, 
used up bodily and mentally. What opportunity is 
there here for recreation and culture? There is a 
great deal said about parental influence. The influ- 
ence of a father who goes to his work before his little 
children are up, and returns to his home to find them 
sound asleep, is certainly mild in its nature." 

Such is the testimony of a man speaking from prac- 
tical experience. Can we not all of us endorse what 
he says ? Do we not know that to improve even an 
hour, from eight to nine in the evening, in reading 



16 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

and culture, we must come to it with unwearied 
limbs and a fresh, active brain? How can you ex- 
pect a man who labors at the forge or tends the shut- 
tle from sunrise to sunset to be in a condition outside 
his working hours for anything but sleep ? Ah, but 
you say, Look at Elihu Burritt, at Theodore Parker, 
and a host of others who have sought knowledge over 
the midnight oil, and scaled mountains of obstacle al- 
most against fate itself. True; but you forget that 
these men are the exceptions, giants who come only 
once or twice in a generation. Would it be fair to 
gauge the speed of all horses by the Arabian charger, 
or to condemn the deer on Boston Common because 
not so fleet of foot as in their God-given mountain 
home? Still less is it fair to compare all immortal 
souls with the great intellectual and moral masters, 
who seem by nature to grasp the very eternities. It 
may be creditable to the exceptional man that by su- 
perhuman effort he achieves success, but it can be no 
discredit to the mass of mankind that under unfavor- 
able circumstances they fail to do likewise. "We must 
take men as we find them. Shall we say to the work- 
ingmen, Go to work, keep contented, "sit up late 
o' nights," and become Theodore Parkers ? We might 
as well talk to stones; and why? Because there 
isn't the stuff there out of which Theodore Parkers 
are made. 

See now where this train of thought brings us. 
Either we must say that the masses are poor, worth- 
less trash, good only as hod-carriers and tenders of 
machinery, and so to be left as they now are in igno- 
rance, or that our social arrangements must be so 
changed to meet their wants as to give them time 
and opportunity for education and culture. We can 
neither dig under them nor fly above them. We 
must either entirely ignore them or meet them where 
they are. To ignore them means — a servile class, 
and ultimately despotism. To meet them, take them 
by the hand, lift them up, teach them to lift them- 
selves up, is the only republican way, and therefore 
for us, who long since in name adopted republican 
institutions, the only alternative. Now if we are to 
meet them, it must be at points where they most 
need help ; and inasmuch as their present hours of 
labor shut them off from education, we must not go 



THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 17 

to them, saying, "Leopard, change your spots !" or, . 
"Mountain, move!" but, like sensible men, meeting 
the demand squarely and fairly, we must shorten the 
hours. Increase the leisure, and fill it to the brim 
and running over with opportunities. Men talk 
about education as if that were the great thing; and, 
broadly viewed, it is. But time and opportunities 
must precede even that narrow thing which people 
call education, which consists of a little arithmetic, a 
smattering of grammar, and a weak show of so-called 
accomplishments. How much more are they neces- 
sary as the forerunners of that truer idea of educa- 
tion, which means the full development of all our 
faculties, the steady growth of character ! 

To the objection that the time, if given, will be 
spent uselessly, perhaps in the grog-shop, it is to be 
said that, if that be really so, so~much the worse for 
this boasted civilization of ours, which allows such 
ignorance to exist, and provides so many school- 
houses called bar-rooms for the teaching of such im- 
morality. But is it really so ? Would the time be 
thus spent? Is it not a safe principle of action that 
opportunities given are opportunities improved f We 
have carried books and schools to the freedmen at 
the South, and reports from all quarters show how 
gratefully every opportunity thus given is embraced. 
The city of Boston has opened free evening schools, 
and the crowds unable to gain admittance testify that 
here, too, opportunities given are opportunities im- 
proved. Carry the principle a little further. Give 
with wise, generous purpose more time and greater 
opportunities, will the heavens fall ? Will more liquor 
be sold ? No, the heavens will remain secure, and less 
liquor be dispensed ; for the laws of the universe will 
remain unchanged, and the stimulus of culture su- 
persede the stimulus of grog. The following letter 
received in Anniversary Week of 1872 is too valuable 
to be omitted in this connection : — 

Senate Chamber, 25 May, 1872. 

Gentlemen, — I cannot take part in your public meet- 
ings, but I declare my sympathy with workingmen. 
In their aspirations for greater equality of condition 
and increased opportunities I unite cordially. There- 
fore I insist that the experiment of an eiglrt-hour law 
in the national workshops shall be tried, so that, if 



18 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

successful, it may be extended. Here let me confess 
that I find this law especially valuable because it 
promises more time for education and general im- 
provement. If the experiment is successful in this 
respect, I shall be less curious on the question of pe- 
cuniary profit and loss, for to my mind the education 
of the human family is above dollars and dividends. 
Meanwhile accept my best wishes, and believe me, 
Faithfully yours, Charles Sumner. 

Such is the legacy the great statesman left a cause 
in which he was fast becoming interested, and of 
which, had his life been spared, he would sooner or 
later have been an earnest advocate. 

Now, to put the whole question in a nutshell, let us 
say:— 

1st. Poverty is the great fact with which the labor 
movement deals. 

2d. Its abolition means also the abolition of ex- 
treme wealth, and every approximation thereto a 
more equitable distribution of wealth. 

3d. This distribution can never be accomplished by 
artificial means dealing with the accumulations of 
the past, but must be sought through the peaceful 
operation of natural laws, making such accumula- 
tions impossible in the future. 

4th. All efforts to this end will ultimately result- 
in cooperation, which is the only basis for a just rela- 
tion between capital and labor. 

5th. The greater portion of the world's wealth is 
now distributed through the wage-system, and every 
increase of wages which comes from better habits of 
living will effect a still more equitable distribution, 
and ultimately result in cooperation. Those meas- 
ures are to be selected, therefore, which peacefully 
and naturally tend to this result. 

6th. Since the ballot in the hands of the working- 
woman means for her opportunities and the opening 
of a career, it will thus increase her wages ; and to 
this end she, in common with all other women, 
should be at once endowed with the elective fran- 
chise. 

7th. A reduction of the hours of labor means time 
for improvement, and is the essential and natural 
way into that education which means better habits of 



THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 19 

living. As a first step, its importance cannot be over- 
rated. It is the primary school of labor reform. 

8th. The twin evil of poverty is ignorance, and 
education of the head, heart, and hands is a necessi- 
ty, Every advance made toward the abolition of the 
one is a blow at the other, as well as at intemperance, 
prostitution, and general crime. The labor move- 
ment, thus understood, takes its place as first among 
the educational forces of our time. 

Such, it seems to me, is the philosophy of labor re- 
form. It proposes to teach a knowledge never learned 
of schools; a knowledge that shall make human life 
truer to the highest ideals. And it begins where 
common sense dictates ; not up in the clouds calling 
to the wingless mortals upon this sordid earth to fly, 
but to the men who are intellectually or morally 
crawling on their knees it proposes to teach the sci- 
ence of walking. The ballot, it says, means feet for 
the workingwoman ; shortening the hours means feet 
for all labor. Feet mean improvement of habits of 
living. Improvement of habits of living means an 
increase of wants and an increase of real worth, and 
these effect an increase of wages, through those nat- 
ural causes which shall bring about a more equitable 
distribution of wealth. 

I said this was a movement which signified revolu- 
tion. Do you realize, ladies and gentlemen, what 
that means ? It is the gradual growth of the princi- 
ple of freedom, here and there asserting itself, some- 
times in peace, sometimes in war, but always to 
achieve final success. "There is an irrepressible con- 
flict/' said Mr. Seward, "between freedom and slav- 
ery." There was one. How many homes can teatify 
to that now ! There is an irrepressible conflict between 
freedom and poverty. Shall we be wise in time, or shall 
we invoke here, too, the hard hand of war ? It seems 
to me it is for the brains and hearts of the nineteenth 
century to decide. There are strikes, the outcome of 
ignorance and passion, the forerunners of conflict, — 
not, as some think, an utter abomination, nor yet the 
exclusive property of labor. They have been indulged 
in in all ages and by all classes. When the clerk 
says to the merchant, "I must have an increase of 
salary or leave your employ," he strikes. When the 
merchant says to the clerk, "Henceforth you must 



20 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

work for a reduced salary or leave my employ,' ' he 
strikes. Ministers strike, societies strike, and when 
labor strikes without appealing to force, it acts upon 
the same principle, and with quite as much, if not 
more, excuse ; for it knows no better way. Ground 
down by poverty, it can neither dictate nor argue. 
There is the whirling machinery before its eyes, 
which weaves out of the raw material and its drudg- 
ery the fabric which capital shall sell and buy. It 
sees but one way to relieve itself for a single hour, 
and adopts it. It clogs the wheels ; it stops the ma- 
chine ; and then the cultured and so-called religious 
classes pronounce it barbarous that these ignorant 
and pestilent fellows should do the only thing they 
have left it in their power to do. I say they, the cult- 
ured and religious classes, because if the state of pov- 
erty and ignorance out of which strikes grow exists 
in the community, they are most responsible for it 
who, with abundance of wealth and a large degree of 
knowledge, might do the most, if they would, to pre- 
vent it. As it is, labor has no reason to expect sym- 
pathy from such quarters. It fights its own battles, 
therefore, with the one clumsy weapon it possesses, 
and, so far as any large result is concerned, generally 
fails. The truth is, one is rarely in a condition to 
strike successfully, unless in a condition to do some- 
thing much better than strike. Especially is this 
true of labor. Unless in striking its demand is at 
once complied with, it must lie idle for weeks, per- 
haps months. Usually it does not possess pecuniary 
ability enough for more than one or (at the outside) 
two weeks' support. After that it must beg, steal, 
starve, or surrender, the chances being that the last 
will be the most difficult thing to do. In the mean- 
time, its antagonist, capital, can hold out for months, 
perhaps years, shut up its shops, go home and live on 
the interest of its money ; every want gratified, at all 
events, every necessity met. What an unequal con- 
test ! Ease and luxury versus starvation. The major- 
ity of strikes reduce the battle to just that point. 
They enable capital to stand, not like the highway rob- 
ber, with grip upon the throat, demanding, "Your 
money or your life!" but with clenched fists and 
closed money-drawers to exclaim, "Come to terms, 
brutes, or die!" 



THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 21 

While, therefore, the class does not exist which has 
a right to criticise labor because it strikes, it is never- 
theless- the duty of every thoughtful man and woman 
to teach it a better and nobler way. And the first 
lesson in this department of knowledge must be from 
the text book of exact justice. In other words, 
thought must develop and expound the underlying 
philosophy of the movement, substituting its own 
peaceful and more effective methods for those of con- 
tention and ill-will. 

Many of these same objections apply to the method 
of politics even more popular now than the method of 
strikes. As at present constituted, politics are given 
over to fraud and corruption. It is a simple impos- 
sibility for a new question to get anything but the 
most superficial discussion from parties and politi- 
cians. Now, every cause must have its era of thor- 
ough discussion ; its philosophy must be studied and 
plainly set forth, before any salient points can be ar- 
rived at, upon which to found a political party. That 
the labor question, like every other so vital to na- 
tional welfare, must sooner or later be carried to the 
ballotbox, is of course true. That is the democratic 
way of settling customs and laws ; but after all a po- 
litical party simply records public opinion, and the 
ballotbox is the place where the record is made. If, 
as Whittier sings, 

"The crowning fact, the kingliest act of freemen, 
• Is the freeman's vote," 

as true is it that brains and hearts inspiring that vote 
are "the power behind the throne, greater than the 
throne itself." The party, and all that goes with it, 
must be subordinated to the idea. Only as it serves 
that is it fit to live. To change the figure, parties are 
mile-stones, not leaders. They mark, as one has said 
the Church marks, the place up to which humanity 
has travelled at a given time. Back of, and greater 
than, parties is the moral agitation of ideas which 
shall mould them to its purposes and make intelligent 
political action possible. Agitation, therefore, is 
the great power in a republic, and it is that to which 
I would summon the thought of the hour. Strikes, 
let me repeat, mean war ; political action uncurbed by 
thought means war; moral agitation, greater and 
deeper and truer than both combined — that, and 



22 THE PHILOSOPHY OF 

that alone, holds out the only reasonable hope of 
peace. Not only as a sympathizer with labor, but as , 
a non-resistant, as one who with O'Oonnell would 
welcome no social amelioration at the cost of a single 
drop of blood, I plead for that. As you value peace, 
as you value the future of the American experiment 
in democratic institutions, I urge you to study and in- 
vestigate the demands of labor. For this problem is 
thoroughly national in its aims and scope. Aye, 
more than national: it holds in its keeping the future 
of the democratic idea. There is no logical terminus 
between barbarism and freedom, and, whether we 
will or not, we are on the high road to a pure democ- 
racy. Our fathers, wiser than they knew, declared 
principles good for all time. Our national troubles 
have all come from departing from the plain propo- 
sitions they so weir laid down. If we are to live as a 
nation, one after another of the usurpations of which 
we have been guilty must be abolished. There can 
be no aristocratic class in a pure democracy, whether 
of the skin, of intelligence, nativity, condition, or sex. 
The slave-holding aristocracy, founded on the color of 
the skin, has been destroyed. The aristocracy of 
wealth and the aristocracy of sex must follow. The 
labor movement is an organized protest against the 
one, — to some extent, as I think, against the other 
also. Its demands, so far as they are guided by 
thought, are not unreasonable ; they only ask the 
republic to be true to its own ideals. 

'Pardon me if I say in all seriousness that the 
thoughtful men and women of to-day have a duty to 
this cause which must not be, cannot be, safely neg- 
lected. They may or may not accept my views, but 
they must study and investigate to the end that they 
may form views for themselves. How many of the 
absurdities now advanced in the name of labor would 
be swept away, if only a dozen thinking men and 
women in every town in Massachusetts would give it 
that attention to which it has a just claim. It will 
never do to excuse yourselves by saying it is agrarian, 
and crude, and despotic. If it really is so, all the 
more necessity that you, who are neither agrarian, 
nor crude, nor despotic, should give it the benefit of 
your practical, developed, liberty-loving natures. Thisj 
great idea of f reodoip-m th£ jcoiirse of progress is to 

55 



THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 23 

receive new meaning. Confront the fact of poverty 
with it ! It shall in time dissolve like icebergs under 
the tropic suns. 

"To honor justice, and to love the right, 
Which friends to friends and State to State unite, 
Be ours. We honor equal aims and ends ; 
But still the greater with the less contends, 
And evil times begin." 

There is much talk now-a-days of public corruption. 
What is the real meaning of credit mobiliers, and sal- 
ary grabs, and the general low tone of life in official 
circles ? Do you think you can abolish dishonesty in 
Congress by reforming a few Eepresentatives ? Not 
at all. John Morrissey in the House of Representa- 
tives means a constituency of John Morrisseys in New 
York. Poverty and wealth, we have said, never join 
hands, save when they go together to vote iniquity at 
the polls. It is the lust of wealth on the one hand, 
and the ignorance of poverty on the other, which 
makes the demagogue's election sure. Whoso would 
abolish demagogues, let him make education and an 
honest living possible to all. A reform of the civil 
service is one of the prominent party watchwords of 
the day. But the reform needed is the introduction 
of common honesty into all departments of the gov- 
ernment, from the White House down. This will 
hardly come so long as business is run on the prin- 
ciple of seeing hew much each man can cheat his 
neighbor without being found out. Public men are 
neither better nor worse than the average public sen- 
timent. A business and general industrial system 
rotten to the core finds its legitimate fruit in knaves 
and buffoons in public life, for whose misdeeds your 
cheeks and mine tingle with shame. With noisy de- 
monstrations they stump States and manipulate leg- 
islation, all in the name of the highest principle, 
while, blind to the wrongs of a large majority of the 
people. 

lom in their senseless mood, 
And ,vhen truth woul c3 oo t them free ; 

ooan, when they c: 

And licensed they are to prey i blic tresis- 

•-** and corrupt the public moral- >se evil in- 

no!W ln SOci ^ aou industry re 

th^ legitime I ntatiye *v movement 



24 THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 

does not cover the whole of God's truth; but it me 
the diffusion of general intelligence and honesty 
destroying the conditions which make ignoram 
necessity and corruption a plant of easy gro^ 
When this is done, the demagogue will find him 
without a constituency, and the public service c< 
to be so largely at the mercy of thieves who bi 
through and steal. 

"The discipline of slavery is unknown 
Amongst us,— hence the more do we require 
The discipline of virtue ; order else 
Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace. 

Trust not to partial care a general good; 
Transfer not to futurity a work 
Of urgent need. Our country must complete 
Her glorious destiny. Begin even now, 

Now, when corruption is a prime pursuit, 
Shew to the several nations for what end 
The powers of civil polity were given." 

It is to such an educational work that the 1; 
movement calls. Said I not rightly it is truly nal 
al in its aims and scope ? Freedom is construe 
poverty destructive, of all those elements which n 
a nation truly great. That is what labor says, 
summons is already ringing in your ears. Soone 
later it will be heard. The sooner the better ! F« 
answering its call the Eepublic of States shall bee 
the democracy of the people, and, marching bra 
forward and upward, lead the world to freedom. 



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